Gaps in the College Application Gauntlet
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Gaps in the College Application Gauntlet Brian Holzman1 · Daniel Klasik2 · Rachel Baker3 Received: 1 June 2018 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract A large literature in higher education research has focused on disparities in rates of successful completion of the various steps along the path that leads to college enrollment (e.g. completing a college preparatory curriculum, taking the SAT or ACT, applying to a college) as an important source of inequitable college attainment between groups of students. In this study, we extend this prior work by explicitly examining race- and income-based gaps in these steps to college enrollment. Drawing on national- and state-representative samples from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we use the V-statistic to calculate race- and income-based gaps in the completion of these steps. We have three main findings. First, we demonstrate that gaps calculated using the V-statistic method differ from gaps calculated using more traditional approaches leading to a new understanding of the size of these gaps. Second, among the steps we analyze, it appears that gaps in academic qualifications are large and similar in size to gaps in college application, admission, and enrollment. Finally, through regression analysis, we show that gaps in academic qualifications and gaps in taking a college entrance exam are the strongest predictors of gaps in the selectivity of eventual enrollment. Policymakers and practitioners interested in closing college enrollment gaps ought to identify interventions that specifically aim to address gaps identified by our analysis early in the postsecondary pathway. Keywords Steps to college enrollment · Race and income gaps · Higher education equity · Ordinal statistics · High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 No matter how one chooses to measure them, gaps in college enrollment by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status [SES] are large and remain stable despite decades of policies aimed at their reduction (e.g., Berkner and Chavez 1997; Bozick and Lauff 2007; Kane 1994, 2004). Moreover, these inequalities are both horizontal and vertical—privileged * Brian Holzman [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology and Houston Education Research Consortium, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Mail Stop 258, Houston, TX 77005, USA
2
Graduate School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University, 2134 G Street NW, Room 311, Washington, DC 20052, USA
3
School of Education, University of California – Irvine, 2060 Education Building, Mail Code 5500, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
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Research in Higher Education
students are more likely to enroll in any college and, within the 4-year sector, are more likely to enroll in selective colleges than are underrepresented minorities and low-SES students (Alon and Tienda 2007; Posselt et al. 2012; Baker et al. 2018). These gaps are concerning given the growing body of literature that shows greater returns to selective college attendance in general and for students from underreprese
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